


Come back to London, thunder

by consultingwives (westminsterabi)



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Fem!John - Freeform, Fem!Sherlock, Gen, Genderbending, Pining Sherlock, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-28
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-04-17 17:30:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4675259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/westminsterabi/pseuds/consultingwives
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The restaurant scene, fem!Sherlock's POV. Stream-of-consciousness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come back to London, thunder

**Author's Note:**

> Title from London Thunder by Foals.

When I step through the door, everything slows. The music, my breath, and the eddies of human activity are all grinding to a halt. Outside, London is still. The Landmark is still, and only John is in motion. Or maybe it’s more like this: nothing ever stopped, it’s all still moving, but it’s gone silent and blank and white and the only bit of colour in the world is her, the only sound in the world is her.

 

She’s just sitting there, fancy violet dress, fringe in her hair (since when?!), oblivious, sipping water and tugging at the collar of her dress, skating her eyes right over where I’m standing, and some part of me wants to charge up at full speed, knocking over the waiters and the diners and emerge through the crowd, eyes bright, shouting _look, I’m here, I’m not dead!_

 

But I will tread carefully. I made some deduction about the maître d’s expectant wife to distract him, but it’s echoing, far off in the distance, as if someone else said it from miles away.

 

Two years it’s been, and she’s still as comely as ever. Her head is turning ever so slightly towards me and my entire body seizes up, like some kind of current running up and down my spine. I have missed the intensity of that gaze, those dark blue eyes that pick me apart and disassemble me and put me back together like a puzzle. It’s her gaze that makes me feel whole, but it’s empty of that feeling I’m looking for.

 

She’s waiting for someone, that much is obvious. But she’s nervous. This is far from a first date; it’s an expensive restaurant. It’s something serious then. It was her who invited, but her boyfriend who first suggested a fancy date.

 

 _Perhaps—_ a waitress bumps into me, and there’s an idea, they’re all wearing bowties, easy enough to procure— _her boyfriend_ —my hands know what to do while my attention is otherwise occupied; I’m spilling water on someone’s shirt, saying “I’m so sorry sir, I’ll go dry that off for you,” and it’s tied on my neck— _is going to—_ “let me take that for you,” another diner has set his glasses down and I’m picking them up, placing them on my nose and sliding them up— _propose._

 

Everything stops.

 

But I’m here, I’m committed, I have to keep going. This couldn’t be more wrong, it couldn’t _feel_ more wrong, it couldn’t be harder to do the simplest thing and just breathe but I’m frozen. A proposal. So it’s done, then. Or it will be, soon. I could just duck out, leave, pull this idiotic bowtie off and throw away the glasses and walk out onto the pavement and march back down to Baker Street, scare Mrs Hudson like I’ve been planning to do anyway, take back up my mantle and pretend as if John doesn’t exist.

 

She’ll hear eventually, of course, in the papers or from Lestrade or Stamford—I can hear that conversation; _so, Sherlock must have been in contact, the old girls, back together!_ And her puzzled, hurt expression, whoever it is breaking the news is suddenly confused, or maybe she’s reading it on Twitter, startled, choking on her own saliva but shaking it off quickly—and she’ll think of it like one would think of another, far-off lifetime.

 

She’ll nuzzle her husband and make some pointed comment about me and how I was always a disappointment to her and my suicide was no different, and my coming back surely the same. And then she’ll fuck him.

 

I can’t go there.

 

I also can’t say the words. It’s like those other ones, the _I’m gay_ that’s so hard to say, even if I know no one will care, or at least will pretend they don’t. Those words, like these ones, are sticking in my throat, lingering with a strange, unpleasant warmth that makes them beg to be said.

 

“Can I help you with anything, ma’am?”

 

Here I am, no going back, really this time, the faceless French waitress with a fake accent that John surely can’t decode. Here’s how I think about it: I can’t just waltz up to her, or call her, or text her, or have Mycroft relay the message. The former two she would surely pin down to a psychotic break, the latter two she would be very reluctant to believe.

 

So this is what I’ll do. I’ll integrate myself into her surroundings. Make myself part of what’s around her, and when the time is right I will reveal myself in a way that makes my existence undeniable. The two years that have passed with go undone, everything will run in reverse, I’ll fly back to the top of Bart’s, step down from the ledge, the bullet will fly out of Moriarty’s brain and back into the gun. The blood will suck itself in. The assassins will disassemble their tripods and put their guns away. Everyone will be safe.  

 

“Hi, yeah, I’m looking for a bottle of champagne…a good one.” A good one, not like that shitty bottle of wine we were going to have before Irene shook everything down to the foundations that one day, two years ago.

 

“Well, these are all excellent vintages, madam.” Not yet, not yet.

 

“Oh, it’s not really my area, what do you suggest?”

 

“Well, you cannot possibly go wrong, but if you would like my personal _recommendation,_ this last one on the list is a favourite of mine. It is, you might say, like a face from the past.”

 

It’s a flourish; a bit of pique, throwing off the glasses in a grand gesture and closing my eyes for the moment when she _sees,_ so that I don’t have to watch that whole tape running backwards, but she doesn’t see. Instead she says, “Great, I’ll have that one please,” and I shake.

 

“It is familiar, but with a quality of surprise!”

 

“Well, surprise me.”

 

Oh, John. “I’m certainly endeavouring to, madam.” I’m turning away, and my eyes flicker to the top of the staircase.

 

And there he is, descending the stairs, tell-tale bulge in his jacket pocket, ready to _pop the question,_ as it were. There he is, ready to wreck it all, destroy this perhaps poorly planned re-entrance into John’s life with four little words. What’s to be done, in the end?

 

There’s no stopping this.

 

“Sorry that took so long.” I’m not looking; his voice is enough to make me whimper. It’s not right, it’s not like the other, simpering voices. It’s steady, rich, loud.

 

“You okay?” she asks, with the hint of a smile in her voice. There’s a bit of anticipation in there, too.

 

“Me? Absolutely fine.” He chuckles, she chuckles, and I’m still not looking.

 

“So, uh, what was it you wanted to ask me?”

 

I can only hear the backdrop, just the white noise of all the other diners, I’m facing away and their lives are spiralling forward like trains, so difficult to stop in their tracks where they’re not meant to: scheduled, steady, sure of themselves. What am I doing here? I really should just storm out, go back to Denmark or Austria or wherever I can forget my own name in a mess of rhythmic Germanic noise. And maybe John’s will go down that drain, too.

 

“Madam,” I’m clearing my throat, turning back around, preparing myself. “I think you’ll find this vintage exceptionally to your liking. It has all the qualities of the old with some of the colour of the new.”

 

 _He_ breaks in. “Sorry, not now.”

 

He’s so forceful. I don’t even know his name yet.

 

“Like a gaze from a crowd of strangers—“ I’m speaking solely to John now, fixed on her eyes, ignoring his anger, “suddenly one is aware of staring into the face of an old friend.”

 

“ _Excuse_ me,” he’s saying, but he doesn’t even matter anymore. I’m looking into John’s eyes and I pull those glasses off and she sees this face as it is, no more disguises or hiding. Just this face. “Interesting disguise, a waiter. They pass amongst us unseen, almost like—“ and she pulls herself to her feet.

 

“Almost like taxi drivers,” she finishes. Her bottom lip is quivering, her arms are shaking and are flushed with goose bumps. She bites her lower lip and clenches her fist.

 

“Johanna, what is it?”

 

“Well, the short version: not dead.” I swallow. “Bit mean, springing it on you like that, I know. Could have given you a heart attack, probably still will, but in my defence it was very funny. Okay, not a great defence.”

 

“Oh, no, you’re…” he’s trailing off.

 

“Oh, yes.”

 

“Oh my god.”

 

“Not quite.”

 

“But, you died! You jumped off a roof!”

 

“No.”

 

“You’re dead.”

 

“No, I’m quite sure, I checked.”

 

His teeth are clenched. He’s beyond angry, straying into deranged. Some detached, scientific, part of me is gleeful, determined to take a perfect inventory of just what angers him so.

 

The rest of me has had the breath knocked out before John has even taken the first swing. Is this really what she likes? This domineering cockhead, so convinced of his own self-worth, ready to defend John to his last breath without fully acknowledging that she could do just as good a job, if not better. He’s not right, they’re not right, nothing about this is right.

 

“Jesus Christ, do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

 

“Well, John, I’m suddenly realising I probably owe you some kind of apology.” Her knuckles are turning white and without warning, she pounds a fist into the table. The rest of her body is quaking.

 

“Johanna, just keep calm.” His hand is resting on her wrist and I realise that he’s completely faceless to me; I can’t stare him in the eye.

 

“Two years,” she’s saying, “Two years!” She’s shaking her hands, palms inward, jaw tensed, fingers tensed, channelling her energy any way that she can. “I thought you were dead! You let me grieve. How could you do that?” I can see the whites above her irises; she’s furious.

 

I have to stop her. “Wait, before you do anything that you might regret, one question. Just let me ask one question.” I swallow. “Do you really let him call you Johanna?”

 

I’m hitting the ground, hands are flying everywhere, glasses and silverware and napkins are flying everywhere, we’re being ejected faster than I can blink and I’m not paying attention or processing because everything stings and Michael—that’s his name, maybe I’ll like him, but I doubt it—is trying to pull _Johanna_ off of me and we’re out on the street or maybe it’s the other way around; he pulled her off and then we got thrown out into the cold November air.

 

It’s a silent trek to a restaurant further down the Marylebone Road, much shabbier than the last. Or I should say, it’s silent for me. The two of them are muttering away, heads together in a confabulation about _the nerve_ or something like that because those are the only words I catch and all I’m seeing are the furtive glances of the happy couple. All the deductions, the analysis, it’s all switched off and all I see is the cold autumn night, back in London. Waiting for Jane to come ‘round.


End file.
